Extending the season of lists. We are used to the "resolutions" and "best of"s this time of year. How about something a bit off topic. My list of 5 things you might not want your sysadmin to try.

1: Don’t name your system "lp", "sendmail" or even worse "kernel" or "panic".

2: Don’t honeypot common binaries like "ls". This might be a great method to trip alarms, but typing "echo *" gets real annoying.

3: Don’t change root’s shell.

4: Don’t run "debug ip packet detail" over a slow connection.

5: Don’t load your restore tapes without first checking the write protect tab.